Wii Conspiracy Theorists - Where Are They Now?

I thought hardcore gamers had dropped their Wii conspiracy theories in the face of overwhelming evidence, but no, they live on.  Hardcore Gamers still believe Nintendo created a fake shortage. 

Fact: Wii is the fastest selling console in history.

Could it be that after the low sales of Gamecube, Nintendo was not prepared for demand higher than game industry had ever seen?

Could it be that Iwata was telling the truth when he said it was his belief that it would take a long time for Wii to catch on?  

Could it be that Nintendo, a company that fights to the last penny to make each console profitable, and is headed by a stubborn, frugal CEO, takes a long time to negotiate deals with manufacturing companies?

Not according to the conspiracy theorists. Nope, Nintendo knew all along that it was going to have a smash hit console that far outpaced PS2's record, and used a "fake shortage" to increase sales. How devious and clever, and amazing how well it works!  Businesses around the world are copying this strategy.  

The toaster I want to buy? The one that's out of stock, thank you very much.  I'll be in line at 6AM in the snow.  

Hardcore Gamers believe that people are mindless sheep, and only they, with all of their intelligence gleaned from shooting fire grenades and exploding alien guts, are smart enough to see through marketing techniques.   They're a self congratulatory bunch.  Then again, they have to be in a world that ignores their Achievements™ and Trophies™.

Why Nintendo stopped using this sales-boosting strategy that's centered on not selling anything is a question I've yet to hear a conspiracy theorist answer.   They believe it on faith.  To the Hardcore Gamer, Out of stock = sales.  Nothing else can explain Wii's success.  Not fun.  Not innovation.  Not the expanded market.  Simply hype.

PS3's problem? It wasn't price. It's not the sub-standard 360/PC ports. It's not the confusing architecture and low-end GPU. The problem is that PS3 is available to buy. Sony, I beg of you on behalf of all your employees, listen to the business strategy touted by your very own hardcore gamers, and stop selling your hardware!  It will sell millions!

Wii Fit to Surpass PS3

"Wii Fit is for casuals! Hardcore gamez rul!!!"


Nintendo recently released its sales figures, and man oh man, who would have expected this in 2006? A mere peripheral overtaking the anticipated gaming Goliath? Incredible.

22 million balance boards are in the wild, which is just 1.08m behind PS3. And PS3 has more than a year head start. With the release of Wii Fit Plus this holiday, look for the balance board to surpass Sony's big black failure.

http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2009/090731e.pdf
(page 3)

Here's a list of games for the Balance Board:
All Star Cheer Squad
EA Sports Active: Personal Trainer
Don King Boxing
Gold's Gym
Jillian Michaels' Fitness Ultimatum 2009
Punch-Out!!
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Skate City Heroes
Skate It
We Ski
We Ski & Snowboard
Shape Boxing: Wii de Enjoy! Diet wii exercise
Wii Fit
Wii Music
Winter Sports 2: The Next Challenge
RTL Biathlon 2009
G1 Jockey Wii 2008
Babysitting Party
Imagine Fashion Party
The Incredible Maze
Overturn
Snowboard Riot
Tetris Party
Dance Dance Revolution
Hula Wii
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games
Yoga Wii
Rock N' Roll Climber
Wii Fit Plus

----
For as much as you all hype yet another by-the-book FPS (killzone 2) or another 3rd person adventure game chock full of cutscenes, what you see above is all it takes to bring them down. Quirky, refreshing gameplay in an age of stagnation.

Hardcore Gamers Suffer from Hardcore Memory Loss

IGN has announced that Nintendo is building in spoilers to "New Super Mario Bros. Wii", as well as future games. If a spot is too difficult, the game will show you how to complete it. Predictably, forums and blogs have been lit up by hardcore gamers lamenting the death of the gaming industry because Nintendo allows gamers to cheat.

Hrm, where have we seen this before? I wonder...


"A warp zone?! That's cheating built into the game, first they release a casual-friendly controller instead of a real gamer's joystick & keyboard, now they let you cheat! You can just go to any level you want, how can they call Mario a game if you dont have to play it, man oh man, NES is for babies!! 8-bit grafx suck 32-bit Atari ST RULEZZ!!"

Hardcore gamers: giving us all something to laugh at since 1985

__---=== MARCH NPD IS HERE! ===---___ Sales Data for all Important Consoles, and also PS3

In February, I pointed out that Killzone 2 didn't hit anywhere near #1 as Sony fanboys hoped, nor did it increase PS3 sales in any meaningful way.

The Sony Defense Force said, "Fryfat you idiot! KZ2 has only been out 2 days, wait until March then you'll see!!!"

PS3, as you may or may not know, peaked in the summer of '08. Since then, it's been selling worse and worse, and is now on a 5 month streak of selling fewer consoles year over year. This usually signals the coming end of a console's lifespan. And when people find out PS3 is a machine that runs 2nd-rate 360 ports, they prefer the real deal. That's why 360 is trending upwards year over year and has yet to peak.

But wait! Were the Sony fanboys correct? Was KZ2's massive effect on the industry to be felt in March, not February? Let's see...

NPD sales data for March 2009

*winners*
Wii: 601,000
DS: 563,000
360: 330,000

*losers*
PS3: 218,000
PSP: 168,000
PS2: 112,000

There you have it, this is the 6th month in a row PS3 posts a decrease in YOY sales, with this March 15% less than last year's. Not even KZ2 can save PS3. Pitiful.

Wii Fit, Pokemon Platinum, RE5, and even Halo Wars sold more than KZ2. Ouch.

And of course, Wii and the new gaming revolution continues to dominate.

The Gaming Revolution Culminates in July

For those worried Nintendo would delay this until Xmas, finally we have a release timeframe.

Wii Sports Resort, the sequel to the most owned game in all history, along with the new MotionPlus addon will be released in July.

That means two of EA's new games, Grand Slam Tennis and Tiger Woods 10 (which are both contenders for Sports GOTY) are scheduled to be out a full month before M+! I wonder if they'll be delayed to July as well.

MotionPlus is going to change the way we play games. We'll start with Frisbee (Disc Dog), Jet Skiing (Power Cruising) and Kendo (Sword Play), as well as 7 other unannouced games, and from there, possibilities are endless. "Skill" is going to mean much, much more than how fast you can press a button, and the traditional gamepad (an old Nintendo invention) as well as the stereotypical image of a gamer sitting lifeless on a couch is going to be a thing of the past.

The release of M+ will also signal the end of PS3, and unless MS has answer, the 360 as well. This is the Wii we all imagined from the beginning. Our wildest fantasies of how great motion control will be in the future is going to become a reality in just 4 months.

Hardcore gamers laugh because there is no blood in Wii Sports Resort, but as we now know, they're a small minority. The rest of the world and I will be camped out in July, eagerly awaiting to see how Miyamoto changes the entire gaming industry once again, in the form of our midnight copies.

Trent Reznor Identifies Why Hardcore Games Suck

Games are not movies. They are entirely seperate mediums, as different as painting and literature. But scores of uncreative game developers, including Tim Schafer, Peter Molyneux, and even Yoichi Wada, think that gaming's greatest goal is to mimic film.

But what is a cutscene? What is a "cinematic atmosphere"? What are beautiful graphics? In film, they are everything. In games, they are a gimmick. That's right - your beloved "hd revolution", games with 600,000 lines of dialogue and summer-blockbuster budgets, have nothing to do with gaming itself. It is a gimmick. G*I*M*M*I*C*K. Everytime you've finished a game and never touched it again, it's because you'd grown tired of the game itself yet hung around to enjoy the story, and once that's over so is your only draw to the game.

Games that focus on gameplay, that require immense strategy or skill are played forever. Look at Starcraft, Guitar Hero, Quake 3. These games don't need any frills, they're simple to pick up yet have nearly unlimited depth in terms of skill or strategy. They celebrate the medium of gaming, and don't try to hide it under frills and makeup.

Many gamers, including myself, used to marvel at watching a cartoon Sonic run around before playing the same old game, and we'd keep playing just to see another cartoon, but the fad is now over. It began with the Sega CD and ended with the PS2. Today's cutscene machines, 360 and PS3, are failing as people are no longer interested in "playing" a movie (except for the moronic hardcore.)

If you enjoy the cinematic experience, you can buy a machine for $100 that streams them to your house 24/7 for free. This cutscene machine has been active since the late 1920's, and there's none of that ho-hum gameplay to worry about.

So as one big gaming company after another lays people off, Sony, THQ, Square, while smaller companies roll around in record setting sales, many gamers are left confused. Trent Reznor is not one of them.

"I think a lot of the big publishers have gone the route of record labels and movie companies where it costs so much to make a game and they're so obsessed with the idea that games have to be cinematic experiences, that lots of money gets spent on the marketing and the rendering, and not a lot of money gets puts into anything innovative and interesting."

Trent knows this because he and his art director pitched their own game awhile back, and this is what they heard from the big publishers (who are no doubt laying people off this year),

"Well, it costs so much to make a game, we're really only interested in sequels or movie tie-ins," Reznor was told.

These days, Reznor says, he's much more interested in the kind of fare one finds on WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, things like Geometry Wars, which as Reznor put it, "Have a very simple design, but offer great depth." In other words, Trent likes gameplay.

And so does the rest of the world, according to sales we see every day.

The fad is over. R.I.P. cinematic games.

Reznor's full interview is here:

http://revision3.com/diggdialogg/trentreznor/#seek=1595:1807

Académie des Hardceaux-Game

Amanda, a rare forum user who supports Wii, recently wrote the following in an attempt to calm an angry mob of Wii Fit haters,

"Besides, your hand-eye coordination might be fine tuned, but how's your sense of balance? Your foot-eye coordination? It's a new kind of video game people, open your minds for like five minutes and try it out (I know you know someone who has one) you might like it. It won't mean that you've betrayed your apple - it'll just mean you tried an orange." - Amanda

While it's clear logic and a good plea, the problem is that she's trying to reason with a group of people who drink Mountain Dew, wear headsets and repeat the word "OWNED!" to total strangers until 4 AM, and who believe "maturity" is a game that features blood and fire grenades.

They will never play a single balance game, or attempt to put their balance up to any real test of skill. Their friend at Gamestop would abandon them if they tried.

Now if Nintendo added an animation where the Mii's head exploded if you fell off the balance board, and a gruff voice yelled, "BOOM TOTAL BALANCE DETONATION!!!" and guts flew at you instead of soccer balls, then they'd consider it a "real" game, but that's the only way.

Hardcore gamers have a superiority complex, and believe that their opinion dictates what is a "game", and what is a "non-game". Real games should be celebrated, non-games should be mocked.

It reminds me of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, who shunned Manet and all Impressionism because it was different, the brush strokes were visible and it seemed to completely ignore line, therefore they called it "non-art". 

Today we have fundamentalist gamers, shunning convention-busting games like Wii Music and Wii Fit, calling them "non-games" and lamenting their success over a traditional FPS.

I remember this same sort of complaining in the early 90's, when people were lamenting the success of FPS games, since they were bringing "casual" action gamers to PC, which was traditionally dominated by slower paced simulator and strategy games. 20 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new generation of gamer shun a new genre, while clinging to traditional balance games.

February NPD

PlayStation 2 131K
PlayStation 3 276K
PSP 199K
Xbox 360 391K
Wii 753K
Nintendo DS 588K

Wii Fit w/ Balance Board NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 644K
Street Fighter IV* CAPCOM USA 360 446K
Street Fighter IV* CAPCOM USA PS3 403K
Wii Play w/ Remote NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 386K
Killzone 2 SONY PS3 323K
Wii Mario Kart with wheel NINTENDO OF AMERICA WII 263K
Call of Duty: World at War* ACTIVISION BLIZZARD 360 193K
Mario Kart DS NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 145K
New Super Mario Bros NINTENDO OF AMERICA NDS 144K
Guitar HeroWorld Tour* ACTIVISION BLIZZARD WII 136K


Every single month, Wii and DS sell more consoles than they had the previous year. This is usually true of 360 as well.

For one console, this isn't the case. For one console, the good times - which were pretty dismal to begin with - have come to an end. PS3 peaked in the summer of '08, since then, Sony has been selling fewer of it's "better than real" "4D" "Cell powered" black behemoth year over year. Will February make it a 4th month straight of sinking year over year sales? Some hope that the Killzone 2 hype will help, and today we will learn the truth.

Sony apologists point to the economy as an explanation for the PS3's past months, but they're forgetting something: the video game industry is booming. Sales are up as a whole, as they have been every month this generation. More people are playing games, more games and consoles are being sold, more game companies are hiring right now than at any point in history.

Let me repeat that: The game industry is making more right now that at any point in the Earth's history.

And yet, Sony (and developers supporting Sony) are failing. Yesterday, for the first time in company history, Sony put a freeze on all employee wages.
http://kotaku.com/5174363/sony-freezing-cutting-employee-wages
This is at a time when the industry as a whole looks to set record sales again this month.

What accounts for PS3's failure? Is it because they marketed the console as a graphic powerhouse, while it's unable to run many titles in HD (including big titles SFIV, RE5, GTA IV) , while the cheapest console this gen outperforms it graphically in nearly every multiplatform game?
http://misterslimm.wordpress.com/360-vs-ps3/xbox-360-vs-ps3-head-to-head-face-off-results/
That would certainly send a mixed signal to consumers.

Of course, I have my own opinion on why Sony is struggling, but I'll leave that for another article. Today is all about sales.

What? What is that I hear? You in the back - speak up!
"who cares about sales, Fryfat!"
Ah , the one question asked in every NPD thread since it became obvious PS3 wasn't going to repeat its predecessors.

Today we'll find out who cares about sales. As you might expect, just a bunch of boring suits from Bloomberg, who wrote this earlier in the week:
"Sony Corp. is under pressure from video-game publishers to cut the price of the PlayStation 3 console or risk seeing more development funds shift to Nintendo Co.'s Wii."
"If they can't meaningfully increase their install base, then you will likely see a capital reallocation"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aLi3FF13LuVI

I hope that answers your question. Now when you hear news that EA is shifting out their unprofitable PS3 development to profitable, exciting Wii projects,
http://wii.ign.com/dor/articles/963279/peter-moore-interview/videos/moore_inv_p2_nintendo_031609.html
or that Valve is abandoning PS3 projects, or that Mass Effect 2 won't appear on PS3, it should now make sense.

Hardcore gamers doing what they do best: CRYING

Wii Fit outsells Halo 3, hardcore gamers respond with tears.

Nothing is funnier than watching hardcore gamers cry. Before Wii was released, they cried about the lack of creativity in the industry, they were angry that video games weren't accepted by normal people, and they constantly complained about generic clones and sequels.

They got what they've been begging for: innovation, new genres, and mass acceptance. Wii Fit, a new IP that has begun a brand new genre, has topped the sales an old, tired generic FPS clone. And look how they cry!

There are some real gems in this thread. I'll post my favorites.

http://kotaku.com/5177033/wii-fit-officially-topples-halo-3-in-sales

-----------------

Komrade Kayce: Hero of Soviet Kotaku

3:18 PM

From hells heart, Wii Fit, I stab at thee!

TheHeartless

3:47 PM

Well, I just want to die.

ncprime

4:18 PM

Depressing news.

ViperFTS

4:50 PM

Such is the state of the industry that a balance board, bought and forgotten in so short a time, outsells a triple A title. The wii fad seems to have taken on a life of it's own, able to sustain itself on three year old hype in spite of the well known limitations of the system and lack of quality support. As much as that accursed machine has done to expand the gaming audience, it has mutated and deformed it. Worst of all, it has hurt the quality of games and the expectations of the investors, publishers, and game designers of the 'consumer'. So few seem to be willing to take any risks on a quality title, instead opting to appeal to the fickle casual crowd in the ever deepening abyss that is the pursuit of shamelessly excessive wealth.

pearce

4:10 PM


Why are Americans and Japs so STUPID! btw. Oh Canada!

PoltergeistXIII

3:30 PM


Sad day for gamers across the U.S....Halo 3 lives on in my heart.

mr-crowley

3:57 PM

@bfwings55: calling wii fit a game is very generous.

Archaotic

3:22 PM

If there were any clue that Microsoft and Sony need to team up to fight Nintendo, it should be this one.

hyewarrior

3:22 PM

Dear God... What has the world come to?

Wibnar

3:22 PM
I really don't understand the mass appeal of this crap its like Pokemon for middle aged people. Hopefully the craze dies like it did with Pokemon.

------------------------

I hope you all enjoyed that half as much as I did! Hardcore gamers: the world's most paranoid hypocrites.

More PS3 Woes

Hardcore gamers can't catch a break.  Things are looking grim for the hardcore holy grail, the PS3.  Resident Evil 5, a series born on the Playstation, a series that has Playstation written all over it, can't keep up with its 360 brother.  Ouch!

To kick a dead horse, someone wrote an article about the 10 reasons PS3 is failing. Those are all valid issues of course, a $500 PS3 can't run a game better than a $200 360 - that disrupts Sony's entire marketing strategy of being the superior system.  But so what?  If Sony addressed every single issue in that article, they'd still be in 3rd, or 2nd at best.

The real reason PS3 is failing is the same reason 360 is failing, they're "hardcore" and therefore doomed from the start.  They're designed from the ground up to appeal to teen boys, a strategy that might be good for a game, but not good for an entire system.  The market is larger than that, and has been larger than that for quite some time.  Only Nintendo listened.

Maddox Tries to Copy Fryfat

Over on the amazon forums (the official forums of this site) people are already comparing me to Maddox.  Sorry to dissapoint you, Manly Justin, but I'm not even a Maddox fan.  I don't enjoy his writing nor his humor. If anything, Maddox seems to be a fan of me. Here are a couple choice quotes from his latest interview,

Maddox: The Wii is the best thing to happen to gaming since the original NES. And if you don't like the Wii, then this is really going to piss you off: Nintendo has single-handedly saved the video game industry. No other company is bothering to move gaming forward like Nintendo is. There are only a handful of genres in gaming, and clearly Sony and Microsoft don't give a shit about any of them except for sports and FPS. I'm so sick and tired of sports and FPS games, and if it were up to Microsoft & Sony, they'd keep milking these tired genres dry and run the entire industry into the ground. I mean, I get it that the industry goes through trends and a few years ago it was RPGs, 2D fighters, shooters, platformers, etc. But this FPS craze has been going on basically since Quake came out on PC. On the Wii, we not only see a representation of every genre of gaming, but we see new genres that didn't exist before the Wii came along (surgery, cooking, balance, etc).

...

I'm really fucking tired of people who play Xbox 360 and PS3 calling themselves "hardcore gamers." Look at the list of top 10 games on 360 up above. See anything in common? Those are the games that most people play on 360, and with the exception of Braid, they also happen to be the most popular, most heavily marketed, and most consumer-oriented games in the industry. It'd be like someone eating a meal at McDonalds and saying "I'm a foodie!" No, you're not. If you're into movies, you don't go out and see Jurassic Park and call it a day. You try to see movies that try new and interesting things. The types of movies that only someone who has watched thousands of movies could appreciate for doing something unique.

Similarly, if you're a hardcore gamer, you should be looking for new gaming experiences. You shouldn't be satisfied playing the same old mass market games. Not that these games are bad, but they're not for "hardcore" gamers any more than McDonalds is for hardcore foodies. If you're a hardcore gamer, go out and play Katamari Damacy, track down an old copy of Radiant Silvergun on Saturn, or play an indie game like World of Goo. These are the experiences that move gaming forward. Not blockbuster sequels like Halo 3. 

As I said, I don't usually agree with Maddox, but this is a big exception.    You can read the full interview here.  

A PS3 Fanboy's Ideal World of Smart, Informed Consumers

One of the funniest things I read on gaming forums is that "people are stupid!!!" and that "Wii sells because people are stupid enough to fall for its clever marketing!!!"

To better understand what would lead someone to this conclusion, I tried to put myself into a hardcore gamer's mind. I knew it worked when I began to drool and have an interest in anime, so I imagined a world where PS3 was the #1 seller.  Here's how it looked:

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hey Grandpa, even though you're not as athletic as you used to be, you can still have fun, so we bought your retirement home "Heavenly Sword"!! Enjoy

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Happy birthday Tim! We got you a new toy to play at your birthday party tonight, a PS3 with "Killzone 2"!!! You can play while all of your guests watch.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That was a great Thanksgiving dinner, and Martha the turkey was perfect! Now let's all go to the family room and watch someone play "Metal Gear Solid 4"

Party on, Babies!

I don't judge games by their cover, I play them and then make up my mind. Hardcore gamers are the opposite - they laugh at a game like "Party Babyz", even though they would never be caught dead playing it, or anything like it. I don't see how they call themselves gamers with such superficial prejudices. It's an excellent game my friends and I have played all week. I'd prefer it over another ho-hum blood and guts shooter any day.

Hardcore gamers are not only stupid enough to buy a mediocre game because it has "mature" subject matter, they'll turn down a great game because they're worried it makes them look like a kid.

Dear hardcore gamers,
If you spend your free time playing video games, nobody will *ever* confuse you for a mature adult. Ever. No matter how much blood is on the cover, or how many alien brains you explode with fire grenades, they'll still think you're immature. Get over yourselves.

Mourning the PS3

(source: NPD shows that PS3 sales are down year over year since October '08)

PS3 sold relatively well in the summer of '08. Not good enough to justify releasing the thing, far from a profit, but the bulky old box was doing better than any other time in its life. It had just received its first highly rated exclusive, blu-ray returned from the format war victorious, and the triple was even gaining about 50k sales a month on its old nemesis, the 360!

Then something happened. Was it 360's price drop? The economy? Multiplatform gaming woes? We're not sure. But we do know that the newest member of the Playstation family has been dropping deeper into last place ever since that summer. The sunny days with the #4's, GTA, DMC, CoD and MGS, came to an end.

Sony wants us to look at the year as a whole and ignore that frightening trend line, which points downwards into their worst holiday season in memory. Perhaps if we don't look, if we pretend this didn't happen, we won't recognize the sad truth that in the summer of '08, before it turned 2 years old, PS3 peaked. It barely got to stretch its little wings.

Sony Playstation the III
2006 - 2008

Rest in Peace